Shall we anticpate the AMC series "Breaking Bad"? I think I may.

ah, but he needed the shovel to recover the cache

Yeah you're right he couldn't just have used his hands to pry up the corner.

he actually shoved some dirt off before prying the corner.
god, ppl. chill.

"recover" as in "cover up again" afterwards -- xp to self

how is Mike "the real asset"? he's an enforcer, those guys aren't really that hard to come by - neither are Jesses but the point stands, Mike isn't really a key to the operation

I'm not seriously bothered by it, but there couldn't have been much dirt to shovel off cuz he pulled the cover off and threw it aside without actually clearing it.

I just thought it seemed like a slightly cheesy bit.

xp as evidenced by Gus basically casually disposing of Mike's partner.

mike is valuable imho, dead guy was his sidekick

I'm not sure why people are more focused on the dinner scene than the fact that Gus is trying to turn Jesse against Walt by making him "useful" but I guess I haven't read absolutely all the thread.

mike is a fucking ninja

also lol @ marie's purple wine opener

how is Mike "the real asset"? he's an enforcer, those guys aren't really that hard to come by

ones as good and proven reliable as Mike surely are, Gus can't just call up an unemployed roadie from the Pump tour cos you know he's got broad shoulders and will look impressive standing in a doorway dude

Yeah you're right he couldn't just have used his hands to pry up the corner.

TS: getting dirt on your fingertips that you can wipe off on your pants, or getting it dug right in under your fingernails on the first drop of the morning, where it's going to irritate you all day, when you've already got that ear throbbing away at you and this dipshit kid endlessly yammering with his bullshit

Mike's kind of a Winston Wolfe type, a fixer or whatever. My imaginary crime lord instincts tell me that is, indeed, much harder to find than just a simple killer.

Mike was blatantly quite enjoying freaking Jesse out with little gangster flourishes such as the fetching of the shovel.

We haven't seen any evidence that Mike gives a shit about the dead guy have we? Considering how most inept most of the muscle in Breaking Bad has been you'd imagine his instincts would be invaluable to Gus. That scene when he was in the truck while they were shooting at it shows how good he is.

Also he's not just muscle, he's a spy as well.

Well, clearly Mike was not expecting Jesse to drive off with his car, trunk full of money, so conceivably all sorts of other stuff could have gone wrong, too.

Well, it almost did - Mike made the call about needing a pickup, remember? But in a situation where Jesse is the game and Mike is the hunter there isn't really any contest.

(Plus Jesse may be stupid but I don't think he's stupid enough to try running off with Gus "I Kill People With My Bare Hands" Fring's money.)

also lol @ marie's purple wine opener

And purple bag of coffee!!!

purple kettle

The fixers I've employed have been nowhere neat as adept as Mike. I'd kill for a fixer that good.

My new (based on nothing) prediction: At some point Walt, having renewed Hank's dogged interest, will have to kill Hank. Later, Marie, finding purpose in life after going through Hank's stuff, will be the one to ultimately bust Walt, setting up a showdown between her and her sister. (That would be a true jump the shark moment, of course).

last season's warehouse scene was enough to establish mike's black ops cred

Screw the warehouse. How about hunkering down in a cold trailer, waiting to ambush cartel dudes, not flinching when he gets his ear blown off by a machine gun, then popping out of the trailer to get the job done with just a couple of shots?

Wondering when Mike left the police actually. He's the only player who Hank hasn't come face-to-face with, to my knowledge. It's possible they might actually have met.

Good point. I bet they're saving that connection in their back pocket for later.

Was it Mike who put the call in that saved Hank? Can't quite remember, or remember why they cared whether Hank died or not.

We haven't seen any evidence that Mike gives a shit about the dead guy have we?

When Jesse was going on about how he should get a gun to help 'guard' Mike because he was 'that guy' or something, Mike kind of snapped 'you're not that guy, I had a guy but I dont any more', and he seemed kind of pissed off or upset. I assumed he was talking about Victor.

Maybe, I assumed Jesse was just annoying the fuck out of him.

being a bit pissed off about losing the guy bc of jesse and walt is not the same as 'giving a shit' rly

I dunno if you noticed but Mike isn't exactly the most expressive character. I think it qualifies as giving a shit

The fact that he said 'I had a guy, you're not that guy' rather than just 'you're not that guy', just made me think that he was pissed off about it, rather than just pissed off with Jesse.

Surely if he didn't give a shit he wouldn't be pissed off? I'm not saying he's going to turn on Gus or anything, we saw them chatting later on and he was totally normal, I just think he is maybe a little more unsettled than we have seen him up to now.

Well it's pretty obvious Mike is pissed off about something, he punched Walt in the face. I think it's maybe more than Mike doesn't like being punked, and Walt managed it.

Well Mike essentially knowingly had Victor killed when he spoke with Gus on the phone after Victor had gone to get Jesse, maybe seeing it done so brutally right in front of him has made him feel remorse?

i think it's more him questioning his own loyalty to gus than anything else.

yeah i found the dinner scene excruciating (not bad tho) but rather than what actually happened i was expecting the fall out to be skyler finding out that this chemistry genius meth cook was shot dead in his home and thus finally realising the level of danger walt and his family are really in. this show is not gonna have a happy ending.

That might still happen.

i'm assuming she will make the connection next episode yeah

not reading the thread, because of spoilers, so won't really be able to make much of a contribution, but i just finished the second series. jesus christ this show is dark. also i don't really have any sympathy for walt anymore whatsoever. no idea how they're going to go from here.

xpost Skyler is already pretty far down the River Denial.

They can't stop now anyway unless the inexplicably cut off Hank's medical bills. But Skylar is enjoying every minute of it so far.

Was it Mike who put the call in that saved Hank? Can't quite remember, or remember why they cared whether Hank died or not.

There was a voice changer on the line but it sounded like Mike.

Gus arranged the call to "make a scene" that would put the heat on the Mexican cartel. It was never revealed who actually made the call but I always assumed it was Gus.

The weird thing about Walt drunkenly debunking Hank's Gale-as-Heisenberg theory is, if it were to occur like that IRL, it should actually work in Walt's favor. Think about it: The market will continue to be flooded with blue meth, so it wouldn't take long for Hank to figure out that Gale wasn't Heisenberg anyway. That's a given. Meanwhile, Walt's insight would seem to Hank (presumably) like the exact opposite of a confession -- "Hey bud, are you sure you've got your guy? I gotta tell you, I'm a chemistry expert, and I kind of know what to look for here, and frankly, this is not the work of a genius, these are just some cribbed notes." Because if Walt were Heisenberg (and why would Hank suspect that AT ALL?), why would he poke the sleeping dog here? At that point, Hank might actually look to Walt for further insight, maybe provide him with important details of the investigation, because Walt has proven here to be an asset -- in that he correctly predicted Gale was not Heisenberg simply by looking over his notes with an expert's eye -- not a suspect. I don't think the show will play it that way, but that seems to be the more "logical" conclusion of those events. (More importantly: Why does Hank give a fuck about Heisenberg anyway? Gus should be his target, not the ineffectual egghead in his employ. If Heisenberg were to be jailed, the market would merely be saturated with shittier meth. To catch Gus would be to shut down a criminal empire.)

At this point, the ONLY reason Hank might suspect Walt is his "I won a fortune at the casino" story. But (A) Walt has the receipts to back that up (thanks to Saul), and (B) if you're a cop, what's the more reasonable conclusion? That your nerdy, awkward, cancer-recovering brother-in-law figured out how to count cards? Or that your nerdy, awkward, cancer-recovering brother-in-law is actually the criminal supervillain you have been obsessively chasing, who has flooded the entire Southwest with thousands of pounds of meth?

he's after Heisenberg because he has leads to Heisenberg - he hasn't had any leads to Gus (until now)

Well right -- but when he saw Gale's tidy lab notes and cozy apartment and karaoke video, didn't he maybe think, "Hmm...not sure this particular dude has the wherewithal to pump this volume of drugs into this massive a region...maybe he's just a low-level drudge and the DEA should be investigating the obviously MUCH-larger operation here"? At this point, frankly, for Hank, Gus IS Heisenberg, in that Gus is the guy he really wants, the BIG bad guy. Even if he were to ID Walt as the cook, after fainting from shock, Hank's ONLY course of action would be to get Walt to flip on Gus, right?

feel like hanks been suspecting walt for a while now just on an instinctive level but doesnt want to admit it to himself

To be honest, in that regard, Walt's insight was pretty inconsequential. Sure, Gale MIGHT not be the genius chemist who created the blue meth...but he's DEFINITELY not the criminal mastermind supplying the entire Southwest with product, knocking out the cartel, dropping bodies all over the region... And neither is Walt.

@ice cr?m -- I feel like the show has set up that suspicion just in Hank's interactions with Walt (the sidelong glances, etc.) but from any logical point of remove it would be fucking delusional: "You know, I think my impotent dweeb brother-in-law is the Vicious Drug Kingpin I have spent the last year of my career as a DEA agent hunting down." Riiiiight.

He's not an impotent dweeb -- he has seen Walt forcefeed shots to Walt Jr, has seen him move out of his home into an apartment and his wife refused to tell why (for a while) -- he has not been an entirely stable dweeb.

Definitely unstable, but that's a far cry from "supervillain." (Based on your evidence, Hank has greater cause to suspect Walt is a child molester than a drug kingpin.) The thing with Junior was super uncomfortable and horrible but it shouldn't give Hank any reason to suspect Walt as Heisenberg. The thing with Skylar MIGHT HAVE raised his suspicion, but they explained that pretty sufficiently with the gambling story -- as I said a few posts ago:"(A) Walt has the receipts to back that up (thanks to Saul), and (B) if you're a cop, what's the more reasonable conclusion? That your nerdy, awkward, cancer-recovering brother-in-law figured out how to count cards? Or that your nerdy, awkward, cancer-recovering brother-in-law is actually the criminal supervillain you have been obsessively chasing, who has flooded the entire Southwest with thousands of pounds of meth?"

Walt has actually directly challenged Hank a couple times, telling him he was carrying around a few hundred thousand bucks in his duffel, saying, "Ya caught me," or whatever he said in response to the WW thing. But the idea that Hank already suspects Walt is Heisenberg has no basis in logic. This is not that the show hasn't deliberately insinuated this, of course, just that it doesn't really stand up to any scrutiny.

(That last line should read "This is not *TO SAY* that the show hasn't deliberately insinuated this, of course, just that it doesn't really stand up to any scrutiny.")

Nobody, let alone Hank, suspects Walt of anything.